L.A. Louver Gallery

Collaborating with L.A. Louver, a gallery deeply embedded in local art history, meant collaborating with its community.

Located between the crowded, highly visible Venice Beach Boardwalk and residential neighborhoods, the gallery’s home uniquely suits its own part-public, part-private identity—public exhibition spaces coexist with semi-private viewing rooms and private offices. Its location invited unique challenges as well.
Designing L.A. Louver’s current building required rezoning a residential use lot to a commercial one. We invited neighbors to voice their concerns about a new commercial building in an already dense area and responded to the issues they raised. The 8,000 square-foot, three-story building we designed for L.A. Louver looks deceptively small from outside. The scale and neutrally-colored façade of the gallery, and the parking structure constructed across the street, formally complement existing buildings and imbue the bustling environment with a sense of calm.
Since it occupies two lots on a street populated by single-lot structures, we designed two parts of the gallery to extend all the way to the sidewalk while the third, central part sits back. This approach gives the building a minimal rather than monolithic character and the three parts together form a courtyard for gatherings and events. A dark, slim steel gate at the courtyard entrance opens completely or partially to give the space a wide-open or more intimate feeling.
Inside, the elegant lines and volumes of the spacious and smaller downstairs galleries easily adapt to accommodate the gallery’s roster, a diverse combination of established icons and younger artists. Upstairs, a long sunlit gallery with smooth white plaster walls leads to an open-air skyroom intended for sculpture.